The Beaverton First Baptist Church will not open its warming shelter this year due to safety concerns, leaving the city with no official severe weather shelter for the first winter in six years. The shelter housed hundreds of homeless per month last winter.

The nearest shelters at the moment are in Hillsboro and Tigard. Annette Evans, coordinator of the Washington County Homeless Program, confirmed that no other shelters are set to open this year in Beaverton.

Doors closed for safety

Church leaders decided during the summer not to host the shelter this year at Beaverton First Baptist, next to the Evelyn M. Schiffler Memorial Park on Erickson Avenue.

In an email sent by Pastor Norm Langston to members of the church in July, he said closing the shelter was one of the most difficult decisions church leadership has made. He noted “there have been broad concerns about our current ability to maintain a safe and secure environment for our volunteers as well as for our guests.”

In particular, volunteers noticed last year that some visitors at the shelter were sneaking in drug paraphernalia and weapons, he said in a phone interview. A few physical fights broke out, and police were called to the church.

According to department records, Beaverton police responded to seven calls at the church between November 2009 and February 2010 and five calls between November 2010 and February 2011. Call numbers spiked to 24 from November 2011 to February 2012. From November 2012 to February 2013, officers responded to 28 calls at the church, including two disturbances, three assaults and one assault with a weapon.

It became clear things were escalating, putting volunteers and shelter guests in danger, Langston said.

On top of that, a number of visitors were ill. The concentrated sickness among a homeless population, some with already fragile health, worried church leaders.

“We could foresee, at some point, a real tragic situation,” Langston said. “If something does occur, it’s on us because we saw it coming and didn’t do anything. Those are tough calls to make.”

Langston said in his July email that the church would “take a break” from hosting the shelter.

Police spokesman Mike Rowe said the department has not issued an urgent shelter request since.

View full sizeThe church is located near Beaverton High School and next to the Evelyn M. Schiffler Memorial Park.Kari Bray/Beaverton Leader

From 2008 on, Beaverton First Baptist Church opened its doors between November and February when temperatures dropped below freezing. The shelter provided three simple meals, hot showers, basic toiletries and a warm place to sleep.

The shelter was supported during the last couple years by a city grant - about $3,000 - along with donations of money, food, clothing and time from community members. The shelter did not initially receive city funds.

During its first year, volunteers rallied support through word of mouth. People braved icy roads or snow-covered sidewalks to haul in batches of soup and loaves of bread, Langston recalled. They donated coats and gloves. They volunteered time to cook or clean or check people into the shelter.

For three years, through the peak of an economic recession that upped unemployment and foreclosures around the country, the shelter served as a resource for people battered by the financial crunch.

“At the height of the recession we helped many singles and families who had never been homeless before,” Langston said by email.

In the last two years, though, the demographics at the shelter changed. Fewer families and more familiar faces began turning up, Langston told the Beaverton Leader.

Nightly head counts at the shelter added up to 672 people between December 2012 and February 2013, Langston said. Of that, 613 were men and 59 women.

It is unclear how many people were counted more than once because they sheltered for multiple nights. Langston said volunteers saw a handful of children, but he did not have exact numbers. January was the busiest month, with 378 people seeking a warm bed.

Numbers were not available for past years.

“A lot of these people are people who had been on the streets for many years,” Langston said. “It was heartbreaking to see the same people five years in a row at the shelter.”

Still, church leaders hoped that if First Baptist closed its doors this winter, someone else would open theirs.

Moving forward

Langston said he notified other organizations involved in the shelter, including the City of Beaverton and the Washington County Homeless Program, in hopes that another shelter could be planned between sunny July and the onset of cold winter weather.

As of Tuesday, Nov. 26, no new shelter has been established. The Beaverton Police Department has not sent out any urgent requests like the one in 2008.

“We were doing the best we could with our volunteer force and the organizational abilities we had,” Langston said. “But we couldn’t meet the need.”

He and others at the church worried that if First Baptist continued to fill the role, however imperfectly, no one else would step up with a better solution. Langston said volunteers from the shelter are happy to be a part of something bigger, but the project needed more security and structure than the church could provide.

“The trajectory we were on was not a good trajectory,” he said. “We need to find another way.”